Search. Click. Find.

I guess I should thank Google for their recent announcement about the Certified Adwords Partner program, which I actually think is a great way for them to acknowledge the very large role we SEM agency types have had in their tremendous growth and success. But I'm sort of on the fence about the whole "hours and hours of studying" thing.

As much as I enjoy the acknowledgment from the Googleplex, I feel like the whole thing is slightly ridiculous. I mean, they're requiring the following:

"Individuals must achieve a passing score on two exams — Google Advertising Fundamentals, along with one advanced-level exam — as opposed to one exam."

The advanced level exams cover the topics of Advanced Search Advertising, Advanced Display Advertising, Advanced Reporting and Analysis (per SearchEngineLand).

First question - who made Google the expert in online advertising? The last time I checked, they didn't even assign you a rep unless you spent over 30K per month for at least a quarter, but I digress. The other last time I checked, they didn't actually allow display ads on their site. Oh, right, they still don't...(and thumbnails of products do not count).

Isn't this kind of overkill? Google claims to offer "better training" and "more rigorous certification" than what they already had. That is, six hours of guided videos about their "self-serve" advertising platform and the NINETY questions on the Google Professional Exam (for beginners) which takes nearly two hours to complete. I thought the whole self-serve PPC model was supposed to be simple for advertisers.

And, for the record, some of the questions on the basic exam were absolutely ridiculous. They don't prove anything about my level of skill managing client campaigns. So does this really raise the bar and make it easier for advertisers to find good SEM talent out there? I really...don't...know.

I think it's a slippery slope when Google starts handing out seals of approval (yes, I know I have one on my site) to more and more people (they've also lowered their spend threshold for certified professionals). It kind of implies that Google endorses the given agency or individual when, in fact, they've gotten around providing any actual endorsements by automating the whole process of certification with a huge battery of tests and training modules.

It's easy to fake a good grade is what I'm saying. Not that I did. but, you know, I have pages and pages of blog posts about how I manage search and I've dedicated a good 10 years of my life to the industry and now I have to take this stupid test...again!

The kicker? The ONE requirement that forced people to get some actual hands on experience with Adwords - the $1000 minimum spend - has been waived. The agency minimum was reduced from $100,000 per quarter to $10,000. That's a big difference, folks. Trust me. So, now anyone who passes these two tests is labeled an Adwords expert even if they haven't managed a single account.

Oh well. I have to go study now.